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Six More Great Apps for Your Computer Last month I recommended half a dozen great mini-applications that have found permanent residence on my computer, with the promise to bring you six more in this issue. Again, most are free or available at very low cost, and all have been extensively tested by your friend Victor. I'm confident you'll find them helpful as well. 7. Backup, Share, Sync, and More
If you're not already using Dropbox, you're missing out on perhaps the best cloud-based application ever created. First, you download the free Dropbox program. Versions are available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and mobile devices. After installation, you'll have a new, special file folder on your computer. Any file you drop in there will be copied to "the cloud" (i.e. Dropboxes' high-end data center) in the background. Security is very tight, as your files are encrypted to military standards and inaccessible without your unique password. If that's all Dropbox did (i.e. act as secure backup service like Mozy or Carbonite) it would be OK, but there's so much more to this story. The real power of Dropbox occurs when you install it on multiple computers. After you've set the proper permissions, any file you drop from computer "A" will be rapidly and automatically copied to computer "B" (and "C" and so on). Likewise, any edits you make on a spreadsheet or Word document on "B" will update on "A" and "C." You have full control over who sees what, or you can make certain subfolders public and available to customers, vendors, etc. If you're away from your computers, you can log in from any remote web browser and grab a file from home or office. Likewise, you can install Dropbox on your iPhone or Droid and have instant access to important files and documents on the go. I've just begun to describe all the cool things you can do with Dropbox. Did I mention it's free? Well, you get 2GB absolutely free, but if you need more space, there's a Pro plan with 50GB for $9.99/month or 100GB for $19.99/month. There's also a referral program. If you share a link with your friends (like I just did), you'll get an extra 250MB for each person who sets up their own free account. 8. Email the Really Big Stuff, the Right Way On a daily basis, well-meaning people send me a way-too-big email attachment. What constitutes "too big?" Current net etiquette says to keep the total size of all attachments under one megabyte. But some PDF's and PowerPoints and image files can weigh in at several times that size. It doesn't affect me because of the way I have our email servers configured but many other folks you send email to are capped at 25 or 50 meg. After their mailbox fills, every new email that tries to arrive gets bounced back to the sender. Imagine how unhappy these folks will be when they look and see your single 20 megabyte email maxed out their box... and you've prevented them from receiving that Grand Prize Award Notification from Publishers Clearinghouse! So, what do you do? Well, the best tool for this job is As this little diagram shows, instead of emailing a huge attachment, you simply tell YouSendIt to upload the file and it'll simultaneously create a tiny notification message with a secure download link for the recipient. It's fast and very easy (on both ends). There is a 14-day free trial and several levels of service. I have the "Pro" account at $9.99/month which allows sending files up to 2GB in size and a total of 500 downloads per month. That version has all the features and capacity I need. YouSendIt also has a "Lite" version which is completely free but limits you to a maximum file size of 100 megabytes. That may be sufficient for your needs, and it's SO much better than trying to email those big files the old fashioned way. 9. Put a Robot to Work for You
10. Keep Files in Sync
11. Power Search
12. Fence Off Your Desktop
The "Pro" version adds a couple of features, but you don't really need them and it requires you install an annoying purchasing system, so just download the free version and enjoy.
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I don't know which is worse, managing the logins and passwords for all the various web sites we visit each day, or manually typing name, address, city, state, zip, phone, email, and credit card information every time something needs to be purchased online. Thankfully, there's a great, proven program that'll instantly eliminate all this tedious activity. 
There are a dozen different "file synchronization" programs available, many of them free. So why should you pay $19 for a copy of 
Last month, I told you about the Search Everything program. I stand by that recommendation. It's the very fastest way to find a file on your computer, no matter where it's lurking -- with one caveat: you must know at least part of the file's name; it's the nature of that beast. But often you don't know the name of the file, or you're searching for something Outlook-related like an email message, attachment, calendar item, or contact name. Perhaps you're trying to dig out a long-lost document and all you know is a rough date or a fragment of its contents. That's when you need a full-blown, heavy-duty search tool like 
Our computer monitors are a lot bigger than they used to be. Most folks, myself included, tend to use all that desktop space to place lots of shortcuts and icons for quick access. Trouble is, there's no organization. All those shortcut, program, and file icons are just tossed into a big pile. Being an organized guy, I sought out a better way to tidy up that mess.
At first, when someone suggested to me that I try Fences, I resisted. I normally avoid programs that customizes the Windows desktop, fearing that they're going to break something in the operating system. However, my fear was unfounded in this case. 